A Brit in Cthulhu Country
by Seamus MacHenry
Summary: Based of the Cthulhu/Mythos stories by H.P. Lovecraft. In 1920, Ex-British Army Officer Calvin Jacobs makes his way to the United States. What he finds there will shake his already scarred mind. Will he be able to cope and help save humanity?


_From the diary of Calvin Jacobs:_

_"August the fourteenth, 1920_

_It has been six days since last I saw land. During the crossing I spent most of my time on deck, not wanting to be a prisoner in that closet they call a cabin. One can only imagine what the third class passengers were forced to sleep in._

_Finally today the ship came into sight of land. Even before we could see the port of New York we chanced a view of the Statue of Liberty, ever welcoming travelers to America. As we passed it, many of the passengers came up on deck to watch as the ship maneuvered into port and to wave at those Americans waiting to welcome loved ones and strangers to their country._

_As I waited on deck I looked and saw all the happy faces of those returning to family or looking for a fresh future in the so-called Land of Opportunity. My expression was almost in defiance of the atmosphere of the rest of the passengers; a bleak expression with hints of anger, fear, and indifference. For me, this fresh start in a new country is somehow tainted by what I saw and experienced in the Great War._

_I still have nightmares about the fighting. The death and devastation. Sometimes I can even smell the dirt, blood, and gunpowder when I am dreaming. I wake up wondering if I really am dreaming or if I am back in France, sleeping in a trench filled with muck. Sometimes I wake up covered in sweat, service revolver in hand, ready to fend off the next German attack._

_Am I going mad? Sometimes I really do think I am…_

_Tomorrow will be a long day. I am catching the overnight train from New York to Boston. It should be arriving there in the morning where Alice wrote that she would meet me. It has been six long years since last I saw her. I think the very last time was right before I was shipped out to France in 1914. She looked so beautiful that day. _

_Now I am beginning to ramble on past events. I think I have been awake for too long. A few hours sleep on the overnight to Boston should do me well."_

Calvin Jacobs closed the small yet thick notebook which he had used as a diary for the past six or seven years and bound it shut with a length of cord attached to the spine of the book. Pocketing both the pencil and notebook in one of the deep pockets in his long coat, Calvin stood up and stretched.

Clad in a black army trench coat with black slacks, black shirt and a black fedora, Calvin looked like most every other man standing in line for the ticket booth. One of the few differences between him and the other men was his trench coat was frayed and worn in many places, including the shoulder straps which had had his captain rank insignia torn off. He also stood more confidently, his back strait and shoulders set; a leftover from his years in His Majesty's Army.

His facial features were none too common, yet they had a memorable quality to them. He was shaven but a shadow had grown across his face in the space of a couple days without a proper shave. His skin was well tanned, yet not too much. Sandy brown hair showed through the back and sides of his fedora. Perhaps the most striking feature was his eyes; a deep, piercing blue that seemed to be constantly staring through you.

Calvin was not exactly tall, although he did reach six feet in height whilst wearing his shoes. Yet, with his military bearing, he almost seemed to tower over the others in the line who most certainly had never been in the military, or at least had not seen real combat.

The last person ahead of Calvin moved off, away from the ticket booth. Picking up his large suitcase, Calvin approached the small window.

"How may I help you, sir?" the teller asked.

"A one-way ticket for the overnight to Boston please," Calvin replied while digging through his coat for his wallet.

"Sleeping birth?"

"Please."

"You're just off the _Olympic_ in from Britain I assume."

Calvin was a bit taken aback by the teller's accurate guess. "Umm, yes. But surely, how could you have known?"

"We get a lot of passengers from the liners here because we are so close by, and the _Olympic_ docked not three hours ago. Only two places that liner docks, here and Liverpool."

"But how did you know I came off the _Olympic_?"

"Your accent," the teller said with a smirk. "Only one liner coming in from Britain for the next few days: the _Olympic_." Seeing Calvin's stunned and amazed expression, the teller simply smiled widely. "When you work a job like mine for as long as I have, you get to have an affinity for remembering the arrival dates and ports of call for the liners coming into dock."

Calvin, still lost in amazement took his first good look at the teller. The man was old but by no means ancient. Perhaps in his mid to late sixties, he had pale skin that was drooping and receding silver hair.

Punching a few buttons into his register and pulling back on the lever, the teller produced a ticket. Ripping it from the roll of ticket paper he handed it to Calvin.

"That will be seven dollars please."

Searching through his wallet of newly acquired American dollars, Calvin pulled out seven dollars and handed it to the teller.

"Thank you very much sir," the teller added as he opened up the register and placed the money inside. "Have a very nice trip."

Lifting his suitcase, Calvin nodded a response to the teller before moving off towards the doors that led to the platform. Already a large contingent of people had gathered to wait for the arrival of the train. As he moved through the crowd to find a suitable waiting place, Calvin heard some other British accents ingrained in the crowd. He also passed a family speaking in French too quickly for him to understand more than a few words.

He found an empty place to stand near one of the support beams for the wooden overhang that helped to shield the platform from the rain and snow. Rummaging through the interior pockets of his coat, Calvin withdrew a packet of cigarettes and a small matchbook. Extracting a cigarette from the box and igniting it with a lit match, Calvin replaced the box and dropped the match, stamping it out with his shoe. Calvin took a long pull on the cigarette, nearly finishing half of it with one inhale. Two more pulls and the cigarette had been reduced to little more than a filter.

Three pulls was his record and he had yet to beat it. Calvin had, along with many other first time smokers, learned to finish their cigarettes as quickly as possible during their time in the trenches. One never knew when a gas shell was going to land in their trench and no one wanted to get caught without their mask on when that happened, nor did they want to waste one of their cigarettes. Even now, when there was no chance of a shell going off in the middle of a crowded rail platform, the habit of smoking his cigarettes as fast as possible still lingered.

It was not long before the train pulled up next to the platform, already having been cleaned and prepared for the next set of passengers to be ferried from New York to Boston. As soon as the train pulled to a stop, the mob of people surged forward to clamber onto the waiting train. Calvin, with his ticket in hand, deftly maneuvered through the pushing crowd and headed for the sleeping birth cars, which have many fewer people pushing to get aboard.

With his suitcase in tow, Calvin climbed aboard and squeezed through the small hallway until he reached his single occupancy room aboard the train. After squeezing inside, he seriously began to reconsider calling it a room. Little bigger than a closet, it contained a small bed, a couple shelves for storing luggage and what barely passed for a desk. The desk was little bigger than your average sheet of paper and was cleared off to give the passenger the luxury of a writing surface that they did not have to make for themselves.

With a heave, Calvin hoisted his luggage into the overhead rack. Using a pair of built-in straps he secured the luggage to the rack as best he could and then allowed himself the luxury of lying down in the bed. The bed was also designed for compactness, being very short and thin, but was still of ample size for Calvin to stretch out into.

As he pried off his shoes and threw them onto the floor, the sheer enormity of his fatigue began to catch up to him. He only fought it long enough for the ticket collector to take his ticket. Then he allowed the abyss to catch him for the next few hours as he was whisked away to Boston.


End file.
